“You Can’t BE What You Can’t See,” says Powerful Documentary Coming to Sarnia

February 17, 2014

Sarnia Library Theatre
February 22, 2014
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

It’s a film about breaking through stereotypes of women, allowing for more leadership opportunities, in every field. Miss Representation is the next film of the Sarnia Justice Film Festival’s 2013–2014 season, to be screened on Saturday, February 22, 2014.

Miss Representation uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. The film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.

In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman’s value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. The film includes stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective.

Miss Representation, like all Sarnia Justice Film Festival screenings, are shown at the downtown Sarnia Library Theatre on select Saturday evenings from 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm. Admission is free, but donations are gladly accepted. Information displays by local organizations will be set up for public viewing by 6:30 p.m. prior to each viewing. Following each film, a discussion period allows individuals connected with the film’s issue to comment on it and take questions from the audience.

Through films such as this, the Sarnia Justice Film Festival hopes to foster awareness and understanding of people around the world who suffer injustice and indignities, including those close to home, here in Sarnia-Lambton. In doing so, we hope to create positive change in our community and world.

The Sarnia Justice Film Festival’s vision is the emergence of a sustainable world of communities at peace, living in just relationship one with another. We value empathy, equality, the sharing of resources and love of neighbour. We seek to be an effective contributor to the realization of this vision shared by many people.

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Additional upcoming films of the season:

GatekeepersSaturday, March 22, 2014
Hard men make peace, or would make peace because they have seen war. That’s the blunt message of The Gatekeepers, which is based on extraordinary sit-down interviews with the surviving heads of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency. For a combined 33 years, these men ran the secretive agency. None have ever spoken about their experiences on camera before.

Chasing IceSaturday, April 26, 2014
Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of climate change. Using time-lapse cameras, his videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate.

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For information regarding the Sarnia Justice Film Festival or the films that it screens, please contact either Thea deGroot at 519-542-5009 or Darren Hakker at [email protected].